I Still Hate Him
by Deyinel
Summary: Imprisoned by GJ and stripped of her powers Shego has a lone visiter every day. A Bittersweet Rongo of sorts.


I Still Hate Him

Disclaimer: Not mine. Period. You'd think I'd only have to say it once, but noooooooo.

Yeah, I know, I should probably be working on my chaptered stories, but this has been in my head for a week, and will _not _leave me alone. I know I can't write anything else until I get it out of my system.

This story originated when I was in a bus going to university and this one phrase popped into my head. "I still hate him." I knew it was said by Shego about Ron, but I had no idea why or in what context. But when it I started thinking about it the whole story just appeared.

So here it is. I'm trying something kind of new with it, so tell me what you think.

Written to Evanescence, so if you have it you might like to listen to it as you read. The songs fit rather well.

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He comes to see me every day at four o'clock. Sometimes he's late, but he always comes. He hasn't missed a day since the beginning.

But I still hate him.

Today he was late.

As usual I paced the confines of my cell, glancing, after every few circuits, as far down the corridor as I could see.

Then I heard him, the soft, inoffensive steps belonged to no one else. They are the steps of someone who tries not to be noticed.

When I heard him coming I sank onto the thin, grey bed that would not be mine no matter how many times I was forced to sleep in it. I sat there as he came up, as though I had been sitting there the whole time, and only rolled my eyes to acknowledge his presence as he came level with the clear front of my cell. Just like always.

"Hello, Shego." He smiled as he said it, one hand resting on the barrier separating us. In his eyes was sorrow for me, sorrow, but no pity. Pity would have fuelled my anger, but his sorrow made me feel better as always.

But I still hate him.

"I was beginning to hope you'd decided not to come today." I kept my voice safely sarcastic, a grim smirk on my lips.

" I will _never _stop coming." He always knows exactly what to say, exactly what I'm really saying. What actually comes out of my mouth is really irrelevant. It is _his_ words that matter.

"Lucky me," I muttered. Those words were truer than they sounded. They were the truest words ever spoken in the history of the world.

But I still hate him.

After our traditional greeting he sat down in his usual place in front of my cell, legs crossed, and hands before him in his lap. The smile never left his lips.

"So," he questioned, one eyebrow raised and voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "You want to hear the latest gossip?"

"If you must, Sidekick." I lay back on the bed in a resigned attitude as he began. He talked about politics, sports, the latest in villain activity; anything and everything, with the exception of a certain crime-fighting cheerleader. She never enters our conversations. As he talked he inserted little jokes and anecdotes along with the information, and I lay back, soaking up his words like the warmth of the sun I would likely never see again. He is my sun now, and I live off the light he gives so generously.

But I still hate him.

After an hour he stopped talking, getting up awkwardly, and with an apologetic air.

"Sorry, Shego, but I can't stay any longer today. I have a ton of homework, and Mr. Barkin says he'll send me to detention if I'm late with another assignment." He really was sorry, to. It doesn't matter how long he stays, talking about nothing, he's always sorry when he goes. I rose with him, stretching slightly.

"Yeah, yeah, get out of here. You need as much education as you can get anyway." He grinned that goofy grin of his. It was so infectious I almost smiled myself, but caught it in time. Then he stood for a minute, loath to go, yet knowing he had to.

"Goodbye," he said at last. "I'll be back tomorrow."

"I'll try to stand the anticipation, Stoppable."

"It was good to see you too, Shego." And, turning, he headed back down the white corridor and out of my sight. But not out of my thoughts. Before he comes and after he leaves, as I eat the slop they call food, and before sleep claims me at night, my thoughts always dwell on him.

But I still hate him.

I remember how this whole thing started. I think of it so often I think it is permanently burned into my brain.

It was two and a quarter months ago and, not unexpectedly, it was because of one of Drakken's stupid machines. The pan-dimensional vortex inducer. It was the third time I had stolen that lousy device for him, and maybe we were both getting a little too complacent, perhaps feeling that it would never cause much harm.

Well, to make a long story short, Drakken had been attempting to hook the inducer up to his latest death ray when team annoying had arrived. The princess and I were fighting, and caused a cave-in of part of the lab. One piece of the resulting debris fell on the death ray, setting it off, and let's just say Dr. D hadn't quite worked the bugs out of it yet.

Instead of shooting out a beam capable of transporting someone to an alternate dimension, a portal opened in the lab, a portal that proceeded to suck both the death ray it was attached to and the control board next to it into its hungry mouth.

I was fairly close to the portal at that time, having been thrown there by Kimmy during our fight, but not nearly as close as Drakken. I heard him cry out, a kind of desperate, helpless scream, before he was swallowed by his creation, and I felt the portal's tug on my own body. And not just my body.

I clung to a support beam with all my might, feeling the portal pull both at the inside and the outside of me. Ripping at something deep, snatching it from me. Then it stopped. I learned later the sidekick managed to get close enough to shut it down. If it wasn't for Stoppable I would also have been sucked into that dimension. And knowing Drakken he hadn't programmed it to go anywhere pleasant.

But I still hate him.

I still don't really know how he was able to shut the portal off, or even to get near it, but it wasn't my concern when I found out what the portal had stolen from me.

My powers. The powers I had lived with since I was thirteen. The loss of them is something I feel each and every day.

Of course, at the time I didn't know what had happened. I was week and barely concious, and didn't even resist when the jerks from Global Justice arrived and hauled me away. And without my powers there was no way I could escape.

The first day in my cell I spent alternately cursing my captors and taking out my anger on anything within my reach. I knew it was only my powers that had allowed me to escape from GJ before, and that now there was no way out. I didn't eat anything that whole day, and refused to sleep, pacing to keep myself awake. I was determined not to co-operate with them.

The second day he came.

When he came up to me that first time I could not believe it. _He _was part of the reason I was here. It was only the wall between us which kept me from lashing out at him.

"Hi, Shego," he said. He didn't smile, but sat down in front of my cell. "I came to talk to you."

"Yeah, well I don't want to talk to you, or hear anything you have to say," I snarled.

"He nodded. "Fair enough. I'll just sit here then." And he did. After about five minutes had gone by, him sitting quietly watching me, and me attempting to ignore him, I lost my temper.  
"Don't you have anything better to do?"

"No," he answered honestly. "I can't think of anywhere where my time would be better spent."

"Get a life, Stoppable." I turned away in disgust. "I don't need your pity."

"I know." Now he did smile, just a little one though. "I'm here to give you my company."

"Well I don't need _that _either. Now get out of here. You're making this place even more unattractive than it was."

"Okay." He rose, willingly enough. But once he was up he just stood there, watching me again.

"_Well?_" I growled.

"I was just thinking. Who is it you're _really_ hurting by starving yourself and not sleeping? You should treat yourself better, Shego. I'll see you tomorrow." And he headed down the corridor.

"How dare you..." and then the last thing he said registered. "Tomorrow?" But he was already gone.

That night I ate what passed for my supper. I knew he was right, but I never told him, and he never brings it up. He never pushes things I don't want to talk about, and instinctively knows what those will be.

But I still hate him.

Of course he was back the next day, and all the others after that. At first I resisted, but inside I already knew he was the only thing keeping me together, keeping me human. His stories and jokes, his smiles and the simplest of his gestures, his very being show me glimpses of the kind of companion I never had, even before I became a villain. Without his daily visits I would have ended up strapped to a table somewhere in the psychiatric ward being fed through a tube.

He is all that is good in my life and I think, no, _know_ that if he had found me many years earlier I would never have gone down the wrong road, and wouldn't be here.

But he was too late.

That is why I hate him.

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And there you have it.

One thing I like is that in the other Rongo stories I have going right now Shego is the one to who is falling head over heels for Ron, and here you get to see Ron doing everything he can to help Shego.

Anyway, I really love how this turned out, but I also want to hear what you guys think. So...you see that little button at the bottom left of the screen? Pressing it and giving me feedback makes me happy.

Oh, and I'm gonna suggest you read the story "Without Kim." It's written by my brother, Invader Peter, and I really like it so far. (Also I might be able to convince him to update if he gets some more reviews.) ;)


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